UC IRVINE NOTEBOOK / ROBYN NORWOOD : It’s No Pleasure Cruise When He’s on the Water

The way you think of sailing is not the way Randy Lake thinks of sailing.

Sailing to Catalina or cruising Baja is not his idea of a good time on the water. Neither is a month in the Caribbean.

You imagine the solitude of the open ocean. He dreams of a forest of masts on Newport Bay.

Lake would rather be jockeying for position before the start of a race than relaxing on a deck.

“I’ve never had a desire to go cruising or go out for a day sail,” said Lake, a UC Irvine senior who won a national sailing title this month. “After racing in such intense competitions in close quarters with all the boats right next to each other. . . . It wouldn’t be that much fun to go out for a cruise.”

Lake’s pursuit of his chosen sport is intense. A member of Irvine’s sailing team, he’s on the water probably five times a week. As a youngster growing up in San Diego, he sailed practically every day during the summer, and every weekend during the year.

The years of developing his skills and honing his strategies paid off Nov. 8, when he won the Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Assn. single-handed national championship at New London, Conn.

The competition consisted of 16 races in Lasers over three days, with perhaps 10 minutes to rest between races. When the grueling weekend was over, nobody had done better than Lake. He won by being a model of consistency--a solid racer who went for the silver and bronze and by doing so ended up with the gold.

“My whole point was to never have a bad race. I wanted to do no worse than sixth or seventh, and never win,” Lake said.

Try not to win?

“Usually if a person wins, it’s because they take a chance,” Lake said. “They might finish first, second and then 10th. My whole point was to try more to get a second, a fifth, a sixth. If you do that long enough, you’ll eventually win a race. It’s a good, consistent way sail. With 16 races, it’s tough to stay mentally focused enough to win 16. It’s a little easier to stay focused to try to finish in the top seven.”

Proving another of his theories--if you’re in the hunt, you’ll eventually win by accident--Lake did win one race, the 14th. He was second in the 15th, and seventh in the last. He won the title after the leader faltered by finishing out of the top 10 in his last two races.

“The guy who was winning gambled,” Lake said. “He was trying different things and they weren’t working.”

Lake’s strategy was the result of his experience, and his desire to atone for his performance in the same competition when he was a freshman.

You’ve heard of dead in the water. Lake was dead last in the water.

“When I was a freshman, I qualified to go and didn’t do so well,” Lake said. “Things just didn’t start off right and I got frustrated. I decided that year I wasn’t gonna get last again.”

He didn’t.

Dan Guerrero, Irvine’s new athletic director, will be able to shape his own staff to an unusual extent. With Barbara Camp leaving for Auburn in mid-December, there are now three openings: associate athletic director/primary women’s administrator, an assistant athletic director for fund development and a marketing director.

A likely candidate for one of the openings is Greg Bistline, who is associate athletic director under Guerrero at Cal State Dominguez Hills and previously was head of the Titan Athletic Foundation at Cal State Fullerton. Unless Bistline is Guerrero’s successor at Dominguez Hills, it’s a good bet he will follow his former boss to Irvine.

Elisma will wait: Ed Elisma, the standout New York City center who is being recruited by men’s basketball Coach Rod Baker and his staff, said Tuesday he will not sign during the early signing period that ends today.

“I’m gonna wait,” said Elisma, who is 6 feet 10 and has been ranked as one of the five best centers in this year’s senior class. Elisma, once thought to be down to a decision between Georgia Tech and Irvine, said he is “down to four--Pitt, Seton Hall, Georgia Tech and Cal Irvine.”

Irvine apparently was able to break into the competition for Elisma partly because Greg Vetrone, one of Baker’s assistants, has known Elisma since the player was a youngster.

Troy Lane, a junior point guard from San Diego University High School, has joined the UC Irvine basketball team as a walk-on.

Newland’s crew: With its regular-season finale coming Saturday against Cal State Long Beach, Coach Ted Newland’s water polo team is on course to be seeded fourth in the NCAA championships Nov. 27-29 at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.

The Anteaters have won 15 of their last 17 matches and four in a row, including a victory over fifth-ranked Pepperdine.